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Actually I meant that one good cricket win is worth a hundred Sun Tzus.

It has to do with the psychology of being a winner or a loser. India, that always lost, is getting used to winning. Winning at the most lucrative international sport purse is not because Indians were emaciated and physically weak in the past. It is because India's successes in the economy, poverty alleviation, democracy, space and IT technology has informed the Indian that he may not be the nakama as thought.

I have little interest in cricket, but even I can tell the transformation wrought on Indian players over the past few years. Kohli just stated that the Australian cricketer was just another human being, that there are 1 billion in India. That is the politest way of telling him to phuq auf. In other words the colonial has demonstrated something to the master race, but also much more importantly, to himself.

Sanjay ji, What you have said is something I feel very strongly about. I too have seen cricket from the late 70's (albeit without much interest)and the transformation in the body language of our team, starting from roughly the time MSD came in, is amazing. Earlier we were content just taking part and would be happy if the visiting white man put in a nice word about our grounds, Taj mahal etc. We didn't play England then, they were called MCC - it being below the dignity of the goras that the natives should be visited by England's team. Kohlis aggression on the field is one of the things that make me proud to be Indian today.

Working on a video of the Aksai Chin area. I am almost done looking at the geography and roads of the entire border. But this is simply a post with Bollywood video and some philosophy. The video is the song "Satarangi re" from Mani Ratnam's "Dil Se". I post it here because it features Aksai Chin's Pangong lake or Pangong Tso in one part. I had never watched the video before and I have not seen the movie. But it sets me off on unrelated philosophical muses.

On another thread I am witnessing a great deal of moaning and breat beating about China's OBOR and how India is doing nothing and only thinking of elections.

But look at this video. It is soft p()rn in Arabic costume. I can imagine several million people west of India all the way up to Algeria and northwards towards Central Asia jerking off and coming inside their desert clothing watching this. This is a pure commercial enterprise - to make money out of sand dwellers. There is nothing Islamic in it except for the clothes and a suggestion of Arabic music in the tones. Funny that we don't see the crass commercial value of Bollywood free enterprise but howl and cry at what China is doing to make itself popular. Ironic.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14m00xcuIjo

Last night for timepass I spent 30 minutes following, on Google earth a crucial part of the CPEC - that is the mountain segment of the highway via Khunjerab pass. I marked 6 avalanches where the road had either been completely covered or the road had collapsed from underneath. I will post images one by one along with date of image on Twitter and cross post on BRF.

I was earlier surprised to learn that the highways from China to Tibet were not all weather highways and that there are treacherous areas that suffer from blockages and it takes 10 days to traverse. This is no good for a military. That was the logic behind the railway to Lhasa. But railway to Lhasa running along those same mountains proved to be an endeavour that would be too expensive in terms of tunnels and bridges because railways need relatively straight runs and cannot zig-zag like road.

Coming back to the Xinjiang-Pakistan highway - the quality of road seems excellent - the same as seen in China/Tibet. There are even several sloping "roof like structures" placed in avalanche prone areas so the avalanche does not block the road and these look like Chinese engineering - exactly the same as in Eastern China and Tibet. But yet - at any given time the road is blocked by an avalanche somewhere or the other. The road is such an insane zig-zag in some areas that building a railway is not going to happen.

So what we are going to see is fantastic roads via Shitistan up to the mountains and after that it will be same-ol'.

On the Chinese side the terrain is flatter and there are no blockages. Funnily there are at least 3 Chinese military camps close to the Pakistan border exactly like the ones near the Indian border - complete with defensive trenches to protect against attacks

I will soon inform you folks whether there are Chinese army camps in Gilgit. At least larger camps are easily recognizable - they have a characteristic design.

^ Shiv sir, I agree, these look like massive landslides. These are very young mountains and the fact that there is usually next to no precipitation in trans himalayas makes the mountain sides very very fragile. With regular rain, the loose gravel, sand is washed away over the years and underlying rock faces emerge.

That brings me to another thought. Cloud seeding can be a deadly weapon in these areas. These roads can be taken out by inducing artificial rain. So an appropriate weaponized missile in air blast mode with Silver/Potassium Iodide can spell disaster for the feeder lines in an event of war. Take for example what happened in Ladakh in 2010 which were caused by cloudburst over the region, entire villages were washed away. Just my imagination running wild.

The more I look at the Karakoram highway - the more road blocks I find. I am totally gobsmacked. And there is almost no traffic in the mountain regions. These facts seem to be a closely held secret. Everyone is pretending that all is well and that there is much traffic between shitland and China. Rubbish

chola wrote:^^^ lol. Even worse than a conscript army where peasants can be made to provide fodder for human waves.

Kind of doubtful that these single child little emperors whose parents spent 100,000 yuan to get them army jobs would be charging up any hills. lol

If we can't kick the arse of these pudding soft, self-indulgent little faggots in a short war then we should be ashamed as Indians.

ok, so we have to scrap the assumption that Chinese PLA is conscript-based, though there are obviously other issues with the quality of their soldiers.

We can scrap the assumption that Cheen is even a half-decent military power in any shape or form. They build lots (and lots and lots) of shiny new hardware because they are a manufacturing power. But as a military farce, they can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag.

Cavas asked Rowden about China commissioning a 4,000 ton frigate and deploying it just six weeks later, a start-to-finish speed inconceivable in the US Navy, where ships undergo many rounds of testing and often take more than one year to deploy. AP China’s navy a burgeoning behemoth or a paper tiger? When asked about the differences between the US and China’s processes, Rowden explained that while a US and a Chinese ship may both appear combat-ready,”[o]ne of them couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag and the other one will rock anything that it comes up against.”

You can see the chini strategy in the quote above. Build and deploy so much stuff so fast that they can't possibly train people to use it.

But as long as there is pro-longed peace they win because those frigates changes the fact on the ground. The PRC plans things this way as they had avoided war at all costs for four decades plus.

How do you derail the plans of a nation deploying this strategy? You fvcking punch them in the back of their fvcking heads.

Cavas asked Rowden about China commissioning a 4,000 ton frigate and deploying it just six weeks later, a start-to-finish speed inconceivable in the US Navy, where ships undergo many rounds of testing and often take more than one year to deploy. AP China’s navy a burgeoning behemoth or a paper tiger? When asked about the differences between the US and China’s processes, Rowden explained that while a US and a Chinese ship may both appear combat-ready,”[o]ne of them couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag and the other one will rock anything that it comes up against.”

A lot of this is just pisskological warfare. When was the last time the US Navy have to actually fight a half decent adversary and not just cruise missiles and carrier airstrikes against turd world countries.

KLNMurthy wrote:ok, so we have to scrap the assumption that Chinese PLA is conscript-based, though there are obviously other issues with the quality of their soldiers.

We can scrap the assumption that Cheen is even a half-decent military power in any shape or form. They build lots (and lots and lots) of shiny new hardware because they are a manufacturing power. But as a military farce, they can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag.

just trying to understand here - if cheens are that bad ie a nation of just manufacturing power - they were able to stop UN/US troops along with Koreans in Korean war, right? i.e. they decided to fight and atleast were able to throw bodies at americans, right?

We can scrap the assumption that Cheen is even a half-decent military power in any shape or form. They build lots (and lots and lots) of shiny new hardware because they are a manufacturing power. But as a military farce, they can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag.

just trying to understand here - if cheens are that bad ie a nation of just manufacturing power - they were able to stop UN/US troops along with Koreans in Korean war, right? i.e. they decided to fight and atleast were able to throw bodies at americans, right?

Ah, that was about 65 years and $11T in GDP ago. A poor peasant army forged during WWII that was willing to sacrifice. Not really all that much to live for, life as a chini farmer in those days.

Whatever was left of that army (including those from 1962) died during the Cultural Revolution and certainly the last remnants were wiped out during their bloody failure in Vietnam circa 1979.

Since then, they avoided warfare like muzzies do pork.

If there is ever a counterpart to SDRE, it is SYRE and they are even less warlike even than we are, IMO. In all of their wealthy dynasties they go soft and weak and then inevitably fall to huns, mongols, manchus until economic suffering hardens them into something tougher (but never to the same warrior mentality of races like the Japs, Germans or the Anglo-Americans.)

The last 40 years were prosperous for them and they, true to form, has assiduously avoided conflict (even when Unkil blew up their embassy in Serbia or tapdanced with Spy planes off Hainan.). Even Iran presented more military diffidence than Cheen.

Add in the single child little emperors, there is no way this army can fight. Like the giant with the wobbly knees, Cheen looks intimidating but all you need is one well-placed kick from behind to send him tumbling on his face.

So this giant faces east with nary anything protecting his arse because he sees no threat from the SDREs to his west. He is confident that as he grows fatter his size will settles things on the ground because no one has the balls to start a fight.

Now in the tradition of Chanakya, what we should do when presented with such an predicament/opportunity?

SriJoy wrote:Assume China is busy in the east and we pull a blitzkreig, overwhelming meagre Chinese defences in Tibet and pour in. Where would the 'new border' between 'Indian Tibet' and 'rest of China' be ? What would our logistical chain look like ? Is it even feasible for India to have an international border over the Tibet plateau ? If so, where ?

Our logistical chain would be a nightmare. Tibet simply does not have enough food for extra people. A division (just 10,000 men) would need 1500 tons per day and that number of men is hardly enough. And we have to cart this stuff up 5 km and beyond. At most we could reoccupy Aksai chin and improve tactical positions near the border.

Please allow me to digress and go off on a tangent - I get such thoughts early in the morning. Western "science" of the 1950s and 60s came up with the idea that the entire world and universe ("mother nature") could be tamed and conquered. Those of us who lapped up science in the 60s were taught that by Y2K there would be huge underwater colonies in the oceans and space would be colonized. Occupying Tibet is fraught with the same problems - "mother nature". It is simply too hostile. The Chinese occupy it by force and they have a temporary population of Hans who come and go apart from Han tourists. They are trying to develop Southern Tibet - close to the Indian border as a kind of holiday resort. If the Chinese are evicted - only Tibetans can live there albeit with the same old frugality of traditional Buddhists.

If you go back in history - Tibet separated China and India. Neither the people from India nor the Chinese had any good reason to go and settle in Tibet. On the other hand Tibetans did occasionally come into the "lowlands" of India like Assam - albeit temporarily. Any Tibetan expansionism was typically beaten back by tribes in Arunachal Pradesh or Nepal - who themselves did not wish to go and stay in Tibet. As a nation - Tibetans were not pushovers and Indian occupation is neither physically nor politically likely. A free Tibet is a possibility - but you can expect free Tibet to want Aksai Chin, Ladakh and Tawang and other areas. the modern paradigm of Westphalian nation state does not allow loose, undefined borders. These days are gone. Free Tibet too would want defined borders with China and India.

Added later - If India develops a proper transport fleet of aircraft independent of current suppliers - we could possibly airlift stuff into Tibet in a copycat Indian version of the Berlin airlift or the American "Over the hump" aid to China during WW 2

Well Tibet as a chronic sore in China's flesh is also an idea that can be used.

Unfortunately American expressions like "Free Tibet" are useless in this day and age. Go back 500 years and America was really free until it was won by Europeans just like Islamic conquests. Words like "Free nations" borrowed from there are utter chicanery. Fact is Tibet never ever had a large population and that was what kept people away - and even within that there was warring and exchange of territorial control.

I suspect that if Tibet were "free" they would have to be armed and deadly to protect their Westphalian borders and they would have territorial disputes with both India and China and would play one off against the other or take the help of some other entity to screw everyone else.

The Xining -Lhasa railway line is built on permafrost - but it is "marginal permafrost" - so it is a sort of experiment where ammonia and other non chemical tricks are used to keep the rock under the surface frozen in Tibet's relatively hot summers (compared to Siberian and Alaskan permafrost)

If global warming does occur - parts of Tibet may start blooming - but the atmosphere is not going to get any more dense or oxygen rich. That would also melt the permafrost and collapse the foundations of China's Tibet railway. But that is another issue.

Tibet is a plateau and has no natural borders to separate it from the chinese heartland. So unless manned by an army, it will be open to invading armies. So unless you defang the PLA, you can't really defend Tibet from them. Sure, you could do it politically if the americans defeat them in the east and we manage to pull off a dash to lhasa and fly the flag and install the tibetan govt in exile back as the govt of tibet with the dalai lama providing legitimacy (atleast in our eyes) to it. The people might most likely agree and you'll have all these refugees going back to Tibet to establish themselves once again. Tawang shouldn't be much of an issue if we agree to have a Nepal type open border. Suzerainity can be worked out given IA presence is a given. Castles in the air all this

Far more beneficial for India if the Tibetan plateau is inhospitable to Chinese infrastructure. I say "non-state actors" in Tibet should conduct geological experiments on the railway line and a few bridges to test, ascertain and verify the earthquake-proof nature of the bridges. Unless this step is taken, the entire "OBOR, we are the new Mongols" tripe will only build up. An artful detonation or two will quickly demonstrate the fragile nature of the Chinese psyche.

Marten wrote:Far more beneficial for India if the Tibetan plateau is inhospitable to Chinese infrastructure. I say "non-state actors" in Tibet should conduct geological experiments on the railway line and a few bridges to test, ascertain and verify the earthquake-proof nature of the bridges. Unless this step is taken, the entire "OBOR, we are the new Mongols" tripe will only build up. An artful detonation or two will quickly demonstrate the fragile nature of the Chinese psyche.

Almost the entire set of railway bridge supports in Tibet rest on permafrost foundations. I was wondering what would happen if sacks of common salt were dumped at the base of 2 or 3000 pylons and dissolved salt allowed to seep in? The salt should lower the freezing point and melt the ice - I'm guessing - and loosen the foundations

If we can bring Nepal on board, the job will be far more easier for us. It has a huge border with china who cannot sustain such a wide spread war with a very long logistic lines. Nepal will come handy to save large part of Tibet in future as well. Also, Mansarovar (which should be our one of the core war objectives) will be a lot easier to capture and hold from Nepal border.

SriJoy wrote:For example, you say Manasarovar should be one of our core objectives. Well fine, but if it is to ever become our 'core objective', then we need to start defining what the border around this 'core objective' would look like.

You are right about defining the borders. From the practicality POV, we should not mind gifting Mansarovar to Nepal. That way it will be a very small stretch of the border for Nepal than India's. Nepal in any case is well and truly part of the Akhand Bharat. So it should not be an issue for us.

three areas which permit straight up moving into tibet is aksai chin(daulat beg oldi), south ladakh demchok region and north sikkim. we hold parts of the tibet flatland in all three. so i suspect any indian moves will stage out of these 3 points - which china is surely aware of.maybe few smallish points in eastern arunachal

C130 landing and takoff in DBO

C17 in mechuka in north AP. walong in east is easier terrain.

AN32 @ walong

but its very hard to imagine brigade size continuous fighting up there except in demchok where our road is near to the border and tank regiments are in place. to get to DBG by road I think one has to go over khardung la into the nubra valley and beyond. i doubt a motorable road exists upto the DBO camp...maybe mule and 4x4 can make it.

Sources told The Tribune that an all-weather 255 km road connecting Darbuk in eastern Ladakh to DBO will be ready by 2017 and its progress is being monitored from South Block in Delhi.

The road between Leh and Darbuk exists, beyond that it’s dodgy. In winter, Army vehicles use frozen Shyok river to cross over. In summer, that option is ruled out as water flow from snow melt is rapid. Troops on induction have to cross a high-pass on foot.The previous road — built at a cost of Rs320 crore and constructed between 2000 and 2012 — was too close to the Shyok and got washed away. Around 160 km of it is being re-aligned to make it access in every weather.

The DBO sits just 10 km from the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China in Aksai Chin. The IAF carries out landing of its transport planes on mud-paved advanced landing ground at the DBO. The road will dominate the LAC in Aksai Chin. The Indian and Chinese Army have had face-offs in 2013 and 2014 in the area.

1 mech/armour brigade with organic rudras/LCH and supporting artillery regiments will be 500tons of supplies needed daily.how many trucks you have on road to the drop off point from depots in Leh and manali side depends on the quality of the roads ... a slow 20kmph type road will need more trucks to keep the supply chain pipe full with daily drops. empty trucks will returning making for busy 2 way traffic

^^ Having Mansarovar into India/Nepal's border is the minimum we should aim. If Mansarovar comes into frontline, so be it. It will not be the first important place to be on the border (Punjab?). It is not part of us anyways at the moment. It's a holy place of Hindus and we must be able to reach there more easily and cheaply. On top of that, it's our pride.

In any case what we are supposed to achieve by winning the war with China apart from protecting our existing border? What is there for us if we don't snatch some of the territories back? The Mansarovar is the most useful place for the ordinary citizen apart from some militarily important posts.

While their airlift capability is yet to be put to the test, a lot of shivering arises out of that long long railway line. If hostilities begin, what is to stop us from raining missiles to drop a dozen bridges between Nagqu and Lhasa. Nagqu has a massive logistics facility right next to the railway station too.

More than 100 men were killed after a medium size medium range transport aircraft Shaanxi Y-8produced by Shaanxi Aircraft Corporation crashed in Myanmar.

Sources in the Myanmar Ministry of Defence confirmed the Shaanxi Y8F200W crashed into Andaman Sea near Dawei.

A Myanmar air force Shaanxi Y8F200W (number 5820) went missing at 1.35pm local time (7:05am UK time) as it flew from Myeik to Yangon, the country’s army said. An anonymous airport source said 105 people and 11 crew were on board at the time. Some source reported that on board were 102 people and 6 crew.

The Shaanxi Y-8 is a medium-size, medium-range transport aircraft designed and manufactured by China’s Shaanxi Aircraft Company.

<snip>

In 2016, the Myanmar Air Force has received new Shaanxi Y8F200W tactical transport aircraft from China.

The two Y8F200W tactical transport aircraft developed by AVIC Shaanxi Corporation arrived at the Mingaladon Airport in Myanmar on March 19, 2016. The Y-8 is a medium-size, mid-range transport aircraft with a capacity for carrying 88 passengers and 20 tons of cargo during 7.3 hours of autonomous.

The good AM should read what we've been saying for decades.The so-called South China Sea in reality should be renamed as the "Indo-China Sea",as that region ,landmass including Vietnam,Cambodia,Laos,etc.,has been called that for centuries.China cannot object as "China" is also mentioned!